the perfect production computer....

[tonyc2002]

what PC's / Mac systems do you guys use....

ime curently in the process of replacing my P4 @ 3gHz for a Core2Duo based machine. (so far i have purchased the motherboard )

ime thinking of going for a 2.67ghz core2duo along with 4gb of ram, ill stick in my emu1820, a decent gfx card, and a couple of barracuda hard drives. should be pretty nippy.

just out of interest tho, does anyone have an intel mac and is using bootcamp to run windows?

if so whats it like? can you switch between say logic and fruityloops in realtime (rewire maybe)?

[BloodStar]

i am on pc: Gigabyte 965p-ds4, Core2Duo E6600, 2x1Gb 800 Hz RAM DualChannel, 2x320Gb Seagate HDD, Seasonic S12 500W PSU, Scythe Ninja CPU cooler + couple of Arctic cooling fans.

As for the 4 Gb RAM, you will have a problem on WinXP 32-bit as it cannt handle more than 3Gb of RAM... It is ok on 64bit WinXP..
If you will go for 3Gb RAM,. I would suggest 2x1Gb Dual channel and 2x512Mb Dual channel rather than 2x1Gb Dual and 1x1Gb single.

As for the CPU, personally Iwould suggest you to go for Quad-core instead of dual core.. The prices dropped rapidly, you can buy decent Quad core for a price of dualcore, now.

Dont spare on CPU cooler and other cooling stuff as if you want to have silent pc, you need to have good cooling system in there. Bear this in mind when you will look for fans, PSU and PC case. As for the PCcase, take the one with good airflow becasue your fans can work on lower RPM, then so it will be quiter than closed PCcase with fans on higher RPM...
Hope this helps.

[tonyc2002]

thanks for the ram advice dude....i didnt know that!

as for the quad core, i was originally thinking about that except i dont think my motherboard will take it. i have a Abit AB9 Pro ya see!

[BloodStar]

Hmm, Abit AB9 Pro doesnt support quadcore.. shame.

[Lokito303]

Hello friends i'm new here on this amazing forum ;] wanted some tips about upgrading my machine, as i'm choosing carefully every step so i do not regret anything later (paranoid mode [on]!)

I'm buying an Evga 680i Motherboard and a QuadCore q6600 2.4ghz processor (i intend to overclock it to 3.0\3.2ghz). I'm kinda lost in which memory kit i should buy for this pc though, i intend to use it heavily for music production. I'm thinking about 4gb of ram but assuming that i want to use win xp 64, should i buy 2 kits of 2x1gb or one kit of 2x2gb? which would be more efficient on this platform? i don't know about good brands\latency issues with memory unfortunally, i'm lost on the subject. I know there are these OCZ kits out there and they say that the Mushkin kits (i think that's the name) are the really fast ones. Well that's it for memories.. and now to:

Compatibility: Will i have issues with some vsts and ableton live itself using win xp 64? i heard somewhere there's a software or driver that could allow to use 32bit vsts on an 64bit platform, don't know if it's true though..

Perfomance: i know ableton supports multi-thread operation, but how good can it be.. will it use an quad-core processor properly and really give that big boost?

thank you

[BloodStar]

hey man, welcome on BOA...

as for the memory. Personally, I would go for 2x2Gb in Dual.. You will still have 2 more free slots for later upgrade to 8Gb...
The brand depends on how much money you want pay. Those Mushkins looks well nice,. quite expensive, though. check Corsair aswell. They do some very good models, cheaper than Mushkin..

[Lokito303]

Tkz for the tip BloodStar!
and sorry for taking so long to answer, i have been busy here! I agree with you that the 2x2gb kit would be really nice to get more room for further upgrades (and that's how you should upgrade a system properly) but i'm just not sure if i can get more perfomance (faster access to the memory) with 4x 1gb or 2x 2gb.. i don't know which would work faster, but i think i'll end up on the 2x2gb idea.
And for the brand, i know these OCZ memories are mean't to gamers enthusiasts, but would they give more boost for an pc mean't for studio use? sorry i think it's a dumb and lame question but as i said i'm taking every step at a time hehehe... but the idea sounds so dumb, that maybe i'll end on corsair. i think i just need to find the right memory with the right timing and power maybe to match the rig and setup i wanna do, no matter the brand. (and damn those mushkins are expensive! and almost triple that cos here in brazil we pay 3x more.)

Also i've googled somewhere that there was an open source project to use your videocard ram\power to boost vst perfomance, sounds insane and crazy but hey, what can we expect nowadays! i'll see if i can find that again and post it here, but as i faintly remember, that project went dead..Anyone else could give me an advice on my other system doubts? :]


and sorry for the off topic but speaking about technology, how much else humanity will get lazy... check this:

http://www.techamok.com/?pid=3030

ok i think it would be awesome to use 4 or 6 mouse pointers at the same time on ableton (that would be a hell of an mental exercise hehehe) but also would get all the fun out of it! but well, that's what they call future.. :( then imagine the reactable and this and so on.. ok i'll stop right here ehehe


tkz

[RDR]

Tkz for the tip BloodStar!
and sorry for taking so long to answer, i have been busy here! I agree with you that the 2x2gb kit would be really nice to get more room for further upgrades (and that's how you should upgrade a system properly) but i'm just not sure if i can get more perfomance (faster access to the memory) with 4x 1gb or 2x 2gb.. i don't know which would work faster, but i think i'll end up on the 2x2gb idea.
And for the brand, i know these OCZ memories are mean't to gamers enthusiasts, but would they give more boost for an pc mean't for studio use? sorry i think it's a dumb and lame question but as i said i'm taking every step at a time hehehe... but the idea sounds so dumb, that maybe i'll end on corsair. i think i just need to find the right memory with the right timing and power maybe to match the rig and setup i wanna do, no matter the brand. (and damn those mushkins are expensive! and almost triple that cos here in brazil we pay 3x more.)

Also i've googled somewhere that there was an open source project to use your videocard ram\power to boost vst perfomance, sounds insane and crazy but hey, what can we expect nowadays! i'll see if i can find that again and post it here, but as i faintly remember, that project went dead..Anyone else could give me an advice on my other system doubts? :]


and sorry for the off topic but speaking about technology, how much else humanity will get lazy... check this:

http://www.techamok.com/?pid=3030

ok i think it would be awesome to use 4 or 6 mouse pointers at the same time on ableton (that would be a hell of an mental exercise hehehe) but also would get all the fun out of it! but well, that's what they call future.. :( then imagine the reactable and this and so on.. ok i'll stop right here ehehe


tkz

Having more than ONE mouse pointer would be rocking! sadly its not possible in windows at ALL..

I did my research a while back and things might have changed.

[davethedrummer]

what PC's / Mac systems do you guys use....

ime curently in the process of replacing my P4 @ 3gHz for a Core2Duo based machine. (so far i have purchased the motherboard )

ime thinking of going for a 2.67ghz core2duo along with 4gb of ram, ill stick in my emu1820, a decent gfx card, and a couple of barracuda hard drives. should be pretty nippy.

just out of interest tho, does anyone have an intel mac and is using bootcamp to run windows?

if so whats it like? can you switch between say logic and fruityloops in realtime (rewire maybe)?

i have a dual intel mac g5
and as far as i know bootcamp and the other windows cross platform programs are still really glitchy and won't allow you access to firewire devices and usb and all that kind of stuff , which obviously you need for music.

to be honest with you theres not much windows can do that osx can't these days
and theres always a work around
windows is handy for the internet thats about it for me
and the software side of things aint so bad either .
in fact a forum i use regularly has pc users complaining that mac gets all the best stuff.

but to be honest i've not tried bootcamp
i read up about it in mac magazine and decided to give it a miss.
it sounded like a real pain.
i bloody hate windows to be honest with you

[rounser]

just out of interest tho, does anyone have an intel mac and is using bootcamp to run windows?

Yup, writing from a bootcamped mac mini. You can only bootcamp with a copy of XP with Service Pack 2 all on the one disc as far as I know btw (maybe they've updated it since to allow vista?). But make sure that your copy of XP matches that description or you'll have to buy a new copy.

if so whats it like? can you switch between say logic and fruityloops in realtime (rewire maybe)?

I've got it using ASIO4ALL, and only one app at a time hogs the driver. If you rewired it it'd be okay.

On the bootcamp issue, absolutely zero problems. The only reminder it's a mac is the white screen before booting into windows instead of the usual black PC screen, and the fact that the mac keyboard lacks a printscreen button (so I have to resort to the virtual keyboard under the Accessibility menu). The OSX installation hangs about taking up a few gig, though, so if you have a small hard drive it'll get smaller bootcamped with 2 OS's on there.

[tonyc2002]

Yup, writing from a bootcamped mac mini. You can only bootcamp with a copy of XP with Service Pack 2 all on the one disc as far as I know btw (maybe they've updated it since to allow vista?). But make sure that your copy of XP matches that description or you'll have to buy a new copy.

I've got it using ASIO4ALL, and only one app at a time hogs the driver. If you rewired it it'd be okay.

On the bootcamp issue, absolutely zero problems. The only reminder it's a mac is the white screen before booting into windows instead of the usual black PC screen, and the fact that the mac keyboard lacks a printscreen button (so I have to resort to the virtual keyboard under the Accessibility menu). The OSX installation hangs about taking up a few gig, though, so if you have a small hard drive it'll get smaller bootcamped with 2 OS's on there.

hmm sounds interesting......does this means you can have mac OS as your primary OS and then have XP running in a mac window? you know so you can drag and drop/rewire etc between them?

[massplanck]

I have a 2.6Ghz Dual Core processor in my laptop. I really dont think i need anymore power under the hood to do what i want to do. I'm so sure of this that im going to spend 200 quid on extending the warranty rather than upgrade.

I suppose your only limit is you budget.

[rounser]

hmm sounds interesting......does this means you can have mac OS as your primary OS and then have XP running in a mac window? you know so you can drag and drop/rewire etc between them?

Nope, unfortunately (that'd be quite cool if you could). There is an emulator that does this, but it's not as swift as a bootcamped XP installation, and not free.

Bootcamp's relationship between the OS's is probably best thought of as follows: Once bootcamp is set up, both OS's have a control panel setting called "Startup Disc", and you can choose Windows XP or Mac OSX in that setting. When you next start up the machine, it boots into whatever OS you've set there. They otherwise don't share files or interact at all, except that the bootcamp setup software on the OSX installation can be used to re-setup, repartition or delete windows if needed.

[RDR]

i have a dual intel mac g5
and as far as i know bootcamp and the other windows cross platform programs are still really glitchy and won't allow you access to firewire devices and usb and all that kind of stuff , which obviously you need for music.

to be honest with you theres not much windows can do that osx can't these days
and theres always a work around
windows is handy for the internet thats about it for me
and the software side of things aint so bad either .
in fact a forum i use regularly has pc users complaining that mac gets all the best stuff.

but to be honest i've not tried bootcamp
i read up about it in mac magazine and decided to give it a miss.
it sounded like a real pain.
i bloody hate windows to be honest with you

Bootcamp is just a partition software dave.

Its not an EMU... all its does is partition and burn a disc full of the drivers windows needs to run the mac hardware

it worked fine for me, in fact it wailed on windows on a PC.

get it installed man, its totally worth it.

[RDR]

Nope, unfortunately (that'd be quite cool if you could). There is an emulator that does this, but it's not as swift as a bootcamped XP installation, and not free.

Bootcamp's relationship between the OS's is probably best thought of as follows: Once bootcamp is set up, both OS's have a control panel setting called "Startup Disc", and you can choose Windows XP or Mac OSX in that setting. When you next start up the machine, it boots into whatever OS you've set there. They otherwise don't share files or interact at all, except that the bootcamp setup software on the OSX installation can be used to re-setup, repartition or delete windows if needed.

You cant rewire between them, but you can run (and i did run) parallels.

http://www.parallels.com/

Its a class bit of software.. alll i have was a windows ISO image on my machine and started windows from within mac... i could access the internet from it and also share files across no problems once it was set up.. it was fast enough to run programs but not really a solution for running audio appz.

Also just to add to previous (and im sorry to say badly educated) posters that files can be transfered form the windows partition under bootcamp, but not the other way around.

as OSX covers more bases than Windows.. and can read windows, whereas windows is a bag of shit and couldnt read a kiddies play book without having pretty pictures.

/Rant.